A three year project to deliver a multi-million pound beauty and restaurant development in North Staffordshire has come to a standstill.
The much-anticipated Beauty and the Bistro project in Basford, Stoke-on-Trent, was due to be completed last summer.
The facility was expected to boast a specialist skin and laser clinic, a beauty and hair salon as well as a nail bar, a spa and a 50-cover restaurant.
But after completing almost 85 per cent of the work, managing director Debbie Tams has been forced to stop work after a key investor pulled out.
She said: "If it wasn’t for our friends and family supporting us during the past 12 months, I don’t know how we would have got through it. It has been a nightmare for us all."
Debbie claims she has spent the last 12 months seeking the £450,000 investment she needs to complete the project from a variety of different sources including banks and at pitching events in London, but has so far been unsuccessful.
She added: "We applied to every high street bank in the country but since the crash in 2008, they are all risk-averse and refuse to lend to any new start-up business and we have applied to many private equity firms but we either belong in the ‘wrong’ sector or don't meet their criteria.
"But we are still determined to get the business open and the doors of opportunity are still open for an interested potential investor."
